6
CASEY SLAMMED THE DOOR BEHIND HER. THE living room windows shook, but it didn’t matter. No one was home. Her mom was working, and Casey herself didn’t count anyway. She was a nobody, a no-talent.
What did she expect—just because she had moved away, just because she had changed her name, things would be different? Somehow she’d magically know how to do things right for a change? She would somehow become another person? She was still the same klutz. A bad-luck magnet by any name.
She stomped upstairs, hoping her heavy footfalls would break through the stairs and she’d go tumbling, tumbling, down into a dark and bottomless rabbit hole like Alice in Wonderland and find a world where everything was turned upside down and inside out. Where the unexpected was expected. The fantasy world she deserved, not the fantasy world of Casey Chang, Normal Girl, which she would never, ever see.
The headache had started on the way home, in the back of her head. Running upstairs made her temples throb. She flopped onto her mattress and closed her eyes. The bed frame thumped hollowly against the wood paneling, which had been painted white but still made her new room look like a set from The Brady Bunch.
No matter how hard she tried to block it out, the audition ran like a loop in her head. How could everything have gone so wrong? How could her voice have acted like that, like a wounded bird never quite finding its flight path? And then backstage, where she let herself be used like that! Cleaning up like Cinderella while they laughed behind her back.
Casey the dud.
They didn’t know her. They didn’t know what she could do—what she used to be able to do back when she was Kara the class officer, the yearbook editor . . . Kara the Unafraid.
She groaned. The train of thoughts made her head hurt even more. And now her cell phone was beeping.
She reached over and pulled it out of her shoulder bag.
hey everything ok? kc harrison didnt mean it. hes ok, really, just talks tough sometimes . . . txt me, ok?
It was from Brianna.
The possible replies ran through Casey’s mind: Leave me alone. I’m pissed at you (true but harsh). Thanks (strong and silent but too cold and mysterious). No problem, it wasn’t your fault, I’m okay (why not just walk all over me?).
She turned the phone off.
Dropping it back into her bag, she noticed her laptop glowing dully on her desk. She sat up and reached for the mouse, jiggling it so the screen would come to life. Not one IM. Which shouldn’t have been surprising, considering that she had deleted her old friends from her buddy list the day she arrived here. At the time it had made sense, a part of her master plan to erase the past, but now the deletion seemed like a colossally dumb idea. It would be nice to talk to someone old and familiar. There was only one thing from her past she hadn’t let go of.
Tentatively she opened a desk drawer. Reaching under a pile of papers, she pulled out a frayed envelope. Her hands shook as she removed a photograph from inside. It was thin and yellowing, cut from a newspaper, and it showed a young, handsome dad and two adorable, smiling kids—a blond, floppy-haired, gap-toothed boy of about seven and a shy-looking girl maybe two years younger. Beneath the photo was a caption that began “Kirk Hammond and Family.”
As tears filled Casey’s eyes, the photo went blurry. She wondered what would happen if she just disappeared, just wandered into the ocean with rocks in her pocket, or flung herself from the Empire State Building. Would anyone care?
Her mom would. Really, that was the only reason Casey kept herself from doing anything stupid. Mom cared.
She tucked the photo into the envelope and shoved it back in the drawer. Falling onto her bed, she began to sob quietly, closing her eyes. No matter how hard you tried, some things never went away. The thought led her into a dream, a dream that was a scattered collage of the day . . . the collision with Dashiell, the awful audition, the tidying up backstage, the insult . . . dud . . .
Dud-dud-da-DUD-dud-dud . . .
She was hearing music now, a rhythm. It filtered into her brain and became words, lyrics to a familiar song. “Day by Day,” from Godspell.
Casey’s eyes blinked open.
The song wafted in through her window, from outside. The voices were too clear, too raw-sounding to be a recording—soft voices without instruments, a cappella. Real voices. Coming nearer. Breaking into harmony. Clapping rhythmically. A gospel solo broke out over the chorus.
“What the—?” She sat up and wiped her face with a tissue. Trudging to the window, she flung it open.
The view was so incongruous, she thought she was in one of those strange states in which you were half awake but still smack in the middle of some whacked-out dream. Below her, dancing on her lawn, were Brianna, Harrison, Dashiell, Charles, and Reese. Dashiell was singing the solo. She knew why he was a tech guy. They all smiled up at her, raising their arms. They looked like a rescue squad, a curiously happy and welcoming rescue squad beckoning her to jump.
“We’re so sorry, Casey Chang . . . ” sang Dashiell to the tune.
Casey scraped her fingernail on the windowpane. It hurt. That meant this was real. Didn’t it?
Harrison, like a fussy orchestra conductor, waved his arms, stopped everyone from singing, and counted off: “One, two, ready, go!”
“For she’s a jolly good fellow, okay, not really a fellow, but we can’t rhyme too well, oh! Do we have some news for her!”
Casey winced. Charles was grinning proudly—the bad lyric had to be his idea.
Charles stepped forward with what looked like a scroll. He unraveled it to the ground, a ridiculous number of loose-leaf pages stapled end to end. “Whereas,” he announced, “we the Drama Club have put our feet in mouth one too many times without watching where we’ve stepped—”
“Charles, that’s nauseating,” Reese said.
“Nobody edited this!” Brianna called out.
“And whereas,” Charles continued, “we have managed, without meaning to, to chase away one of the nicest, most talented, and clear-thinking human beings in our school . . . and whereas, she has, in world-record time, proven said talent beyond a doubt and better than anyone ever seen by the gathered members hereto—”
“Herewith,” Harrison corrected him.
“Herewhatever,” Charles said. “We do hereby offer outright, without competition and by acclamation, to Casey Chang the position of Stage Manager of the Drama Club of Ridgeport High.”
They fell silent and looked up at her with wide, tentative eyes.
One by one they dropped to their knees. “Please?” Harrison asked.
“It’s the most important job in the club,” Charles said. “It’s the person who runs everything.”
Begging. They were begging her to take this job with no experience. At Ridgeport. She wanted to put them on pause for a moment and think. She knew she had to say something. But to say something she had to feel something. Ecstasy, fury, amusement, something. She wasn’t there yet. All of the thoughts raging around in her head and colliding, had somehow managed to cancel one another out.
“Thanks, guys,” she said, gripping the window sash. “I’ll think about it.”